Questions to Alessandro Nisi, Responsible for Studies and Statistics at Accredia, The National Accreditation Body in Italy.
How did you measure less injuries and/or less environmental impact on companies in Italy?
– In order to estimate the reduction in injuries we matched VAT numbers of BS OHSAS 18001 certified companies with INAIL (National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work) database for the period 2012-2014. It came up that, from a counterfactual angle, with equality of characteristics of sector and size, there is a functioning mechanism which drives down the frequency and severity of accidents: injuries are down on average by 16% and in terms of severity the reduction is even more evident, reaching 40%. This differential of avoided injuries has been used to quantify the sum of savings which certified organizations make for the nation. The difference in the rate of injuries was applied to a set of certified businesses in June 2019 (about 6,000 sampled units with 1.5 million employees). Altogether, application of the OH&S management system resulted in 6,000 fewer injuries in one year.
I answer on the environmental impact issue in the second question.
How did you calculate savings on the CO2 emissions (13,73 million tons)?
– I try to make it simple although the answer should be technical. You can look at the report for insights here.
It has been studied the impact of EMS (ISO 14001) among companies in terms of reduction of GHG emissions starting from the coefficients of the probability of improved environmental performance measured by Testa et al. (2014). For every sector a reduction percentage was estimated attributable to a certified EMS depending on the internal distribution in each sector of the number of organizations with a certified EMS and according to the revenue factor of certified businesses set against the total for the sector and on the total timeline of the certification in question. The 4,912 companies considered cover 28 sectors of activity and represent about 16% of the total (in terms of revenue) and the overall “reward” for reduction of GHG emissions is estimated to be 6.9%. The sectoral reward coefficients were related to the data for emissions per sector (source: ISTAT). The cumulative saving attributable to accredited environmental certification is estimated at about 7.76 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions per year.
Also for energy certification an econometric model has been calculated in line with the principal indications of the literature (the methodological approach which has been followed is presented in Fang et al. (2012), “The effect of ESCOs on energy use”, Energy Policy, 51, pp.558-568). In detail it was created an equation of the primary energy consumptions (petrol, coal, gas and renewable energy sources) which is set in relation to population growth, the rate of urbanization, pro capita GDP development (proxy indicator of the dynamic of economic activity). In addition to these variables, two dummy (0 1) variables were included for the purpose of understanding: 1) the presence of ESCos operative in the Italian economic system since 1983; 2) the incremental effect on primary energy consumption attributable since 2009 to the development of standards which provided a strong impulse to ESCos, EGE and EnMS. The saving of primary energy consumption, on the basis of these estimates concerning 2018, is about 2.8 million tonnes in terms of petrol equivalent, with an associated equivalent saving of about 6 million tonnes of CO2.
In total, summing up the impacts of ISO 14001, ESCos, EGE and EnMS on GHG emissions we got almost 14 million tonnes of CO2 saved.
Question to Johan Wallin, Compliance Officer at the Swedish Gambling Authority.
Is there a scheme for the gambling companies inspections? Is it international?
– As I mentioned the technical regulation will be re-accredited every year. The Swedish Gaming authority also have the possibility to delegate to an accredited body who then make another review. According to our schedule for supervision we do not tell in advance when or who will be supervised. But a license is normally for five years so supervisions will take place during this period. Due to covid 19 we haven’t been able to make supervisions on site yet.